BlissQuest: Love Talking Your Life

Zoe under the air conditioner.
(She has her own; the rest of the house goes without!
Rabbits can't be too hot; it can actually be fatal.)

Listening to: This song's lyrics remind us that no matter what, life is still beautiful.

Today's Bliss Formula: We're going to pick out annuals for pots and window boxes...plant nursery, yum! The peonies and poppies are exploding right now, as are the clematis.

To find and live your bliss starts in the now. It starts with recognizing what is already in your life. It starts with noticing the details. Whether you are aware or not, you have been surrounding yourself with your bliss all your life -- it's in you and it won't not be expressed. You may be ignoring the larger picture; you may feel stuck; but the details, the small stuff -- it's already there; you just have to open your eyes and notice.

From those details, you'll begin to develop a picture that will contain all the information and hints you could ever need to figure out where to go from here.

But it starts right this moment. Look up from this computer and take a deep breath. Look around. What details hit your eyes immediately? What do you notice that is already beautiful? Walk away from the computer and look out a window (if you are not lucky enough to be sitting in a dormer, like I am, or perhaps outside with a laptop) -- do not notice the concrete of the sidewalks; notice the small flowers pushing up between the cracks.

Start making lists. Gratitude lists are great. But start making beauty lists.

"What you want, you don't need it now."
--U2

These lists are not how you wish things looked or felt but how they look and feel right now. So what if the kitchen needs a coat of paint; see how the red stripe in the curtain plays against the pale green of the wainscoting.

We have been trained by a media obsessed with perfection to see imperfection as the enemy.

But a bit of imperfection is where the unique lies; it is what makes us human; it is what makes us individuals.

I have braces on right now at age 39, thanks to the pain of TMJ -- not because I want picket fence teeth. There is a small gap developing between my front two teeth, and the dental assistant said we could ask the orthodontist to work on that. I yelled "No!" She thought I was crazy.

But it's that little gap that will make my teeth mine again -- and not some advertisement for the idea of teeth.

In Frank MacEowen's The Celtic Way of Seeing, he talks about geancannach, which he translates as "love talk."

He suggests that this way of talking to and about your world can reconnect you to that world.

It is not about writing poetry. It is not even about writing at all, though you can use pen and paper if that makes you feel more involved in the process. (I think that perhaps it is my pen that does all my thinking!)

You can do this any time. Perhaps you are on the city bus and it's getting overwhelming, do this. Perhaps you are at a job that is your fake job and you are wistfully imagining your easel standing at home, do this.

Or perhaps you have some time to take a long walk to a large city park. Or along the edge of a lake or some body of water. Or you could just walk very slowly around your small yard.

Wherever you are, try this.

Beautiful is ... fill in with the first thing you notice. Beautiful also is ... fill in with something else. And keep going.

Do this all day if you can or do it for five minutes every day. See if it doesn't change you. See if you don't feel something shift and soften. See if you don't suddenly start knowing what it is you are supposed to be doing.

From a Navajo Healing Ceremony:

May it be beautiful before me;
May it be beautiful behind me;
May it be beautiful below me;
May it be beautiful above me;
May it be beautiful all around me.
In beauty, it is finished.

When we see beauty, everything already is perfect -- just as it is.

What beautiful things have you been neglecting to notice?